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Revision Donkey: The Clockwork Soldier
Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: Set in order the long and involved story of that most infuriating of my main characters, Prince Lucas the Proud alias Luke Lackland. He begins as an Entitlement Monster, ends as a Selflessness Monster, and it really isn't clear that anything much has changed about him except his fairer appreciation of his place in the world.
It is even less clear whether he ends up so actively on the right side because he truly cares about it, or just because Kate and his new friends are there. I don't really understand him, and he is not a sufficiently introspective man even to 'get' the concept of understanding himself: all that either of us can honestly say is that we've a pretty good idea of what he'll do in any given situation, when we see it.
This may explain why so much of Luke's plotline is now littered with exasperated notes asking what the hell he thought he was up to at such-and-such a point. He is a very strange, very hollow man, both larger and somewhat less alive than life. In Katy Elflocks, where he is principally a glorious nuisance, this wasn't hard to handle. In his own tale and Kate's, where he really becomes the hero he always mistook himself for, it's a slipping on every step.
One truly painful and revealing moment in working this out was my revisiting a conversation with a girl who's locally the lowest of the low, in which we first see that he's gained some real sense and humanity in his long exile. Only after finishing the first draft do I realize that his sage veteran advice proved as hopelessly full of crap as ever, whereas her first instincts of superstitious peasant suspicion were in fact right on the money. Owww! Unfortunately for Luke, the man he has become is no longer capable of failing to notice this indefinitely.
My best angle on Luke is still from his childhood, and it's all paradoxes: imaginative to the point of scaring himself to scuttle for certainties; romantic to the point of treason, narrow beyond the ability to do a dastard deed; sensitive and guilt-prone to the point of armouring himself untouchably in pride, chivalry, and quixotic conceit; fearful to the point of crazy bravery at every trial...
...every physical trial. Yeah. Luke really starts the story as the most wretched moral coward. He has this way of dealing with every decision by deciding that there's only one honourable choice possible, and therefore he doesn't have any choice to make after all. Reminds me of that other kind of bigwig who's always cornering themselves into 'making the hard choice', which somehow always ends up being the hardest one on everybody else.
By Killer-Kate he's learned that he was wrong about pretty much everything, in many hard schools. He's still, looking back on it, awfully fatalistic: if he doesn't have Katy's principles, Kate's passions, or the immediate needs of comradeship or sworn oaths to decide for him at any point, he does have this habit of finding a set of rails and putting himself onto them at the first opportunity. Self-doubt, or just lifetime instinct by now? More the latter, I think. He is, at least, enough of a general to be good at shunting his enemies onto the wrong rails too.
His strange genius for finding heroism by dodging any thoughts or choices that might lead away from it... could explain quite a bit about my Prince Charming manqué. If I come back to his mid-Rising decisions with that in mind, I hope I can get some sense out of them in the rewrite!
It is even less clear whether he ends up so actively on the right side because he truly cares about it, or just because Kate and his new friends are there. I don't really understand him, and he is not a sufficiently introspective man even to 'get' the concept of understanding himself: all that either of us can honestly say is that we've a pretty good idea of what he'll do in any given situation, when we see it.
This may explain why so much of Luke's plotline is now littered with exasperated notes asking what the hell he thought he was up to at such-and-such a point. He is a very strange, very hollow man, both larger and somewhat less alive than life. In Katy Elflocks, where he is principally a glorious nuisance, this wasn't hard to handle. In his own tale and Kate's, where he really becomes the hero he always mistook himself for, it's a slipping on every step.
One truly painful and revealing moment in working this out was my revisiting a conversation with a girl who's locally the lowest of the low, in which we first see that he's gained some real sense and humanity in his long exile. Only after finishing the first draft do I realize that his sage veteran advice proved as hopelessly full of crap as ever, whereas her first instincts of superstitious peasant suspicion were in fact right on the money. Owww! Unfortunately for Luke, the man he has become is no longer capable of failing to notice this indefinitely.
My best angle on Luke is still from his childhood, and it's all paradoxes: imaginative to the point of scaring himself to scuttle for certainties; romantic to the point of treason, narrow beyond the ability to do a dastard deed; sensitive and guilt-prone to the point of armouring himself untouchably in pride, chivalry, and quixotic conceit; fearful to the point of crazy bravery at every trial...
...every physical trial. Yeah. Luke really starts the story as the most wretched moral coward. He has this way of dealing with every decision by deciding that there's only one honourable choice possible, and therefore he doesn't have any choice to make after all. Reminds me of that other kind of bigwig who's always cornering themselves into 'making the hard choice', which somehow always ends up being the hardest one on everybody else.
By Killer-Kate he's learned that he was wrong about pretty much everything, in many hard schools. He's still, looking back on it, awfully fatalistic: if he doesn't have Katy's principles, Kate's passions, or the immediate needs of comradeship or sworn oaths to decide for him at any point, he does have this habit of finding a set of rails and putting himself onto them at the first opportunity. Self-doubt, or just lifetime instinct by now? More the latter, I think. He is, at least, enough of a general to be good at shunting his enemies onto the wrong rails too.
His strange genius for finding heroism by dodging any thoughts or choices that might lead away from it... could explain quite a bit about my Prince Charming manqué. If I come back to his mid-Rising decisions with that in mind, I hope I can get some sense out of them in the rewrite!